Steerpike

Under a shake-up of the legal system, it transpires that juries are to be scrapped in all cases except murder, rape and manslaughter. The majority of cases will be heard by a judge alone in new plans pushed by Justice Secretary David Lammy – in a move that goes much further than the suggestions of Sir Brian Leveson, who reviewed the UK's criminal courts this year. Good heavens… As reported by the Times, a memo sent by Lammy to ministers and civil servants insisted there was 'no right' to jury trials in the UK – before adding that radical action was necessary to slash the justice backlog in England and Wales. The Deputy Prime Minister wants to create a new tier of court where serious criminal offences will be tried by judges alone.

So much for a simple Chinese takeaway. In his never-ending search for growth, Sir Keir Starmer has finally alighted on the obvious answer: cosying up to the liberal-minded democrats of Tiananmen Square. The Prime Minister is expected to fly to Beijing in the new year, once the long-awaited Chinese super-embassy in Tower Hamlets secures planning approval next month. No wonder 2025 is the year of the snake, eh? But there now seems to be a spanner in the works, ahead of the mooted approval on 10 December. For a group of American politicians are up in arms about the possible threat to global financial security. Steerpike has been shown a letter by a quartet of Nebraskan congressmen addressed to Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury.

Another one bites the dust. Iqbal Mohamed has become the second Independent MP to quit the left-wing Your Party amid party infighting. The group, founded by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, has seen unedifying splits become very public as serious rifts grow between the MPs involved in its launch. The animosity between Corbyn and Sultana has been well documented and now two members of the parliamentary Independent Alliance group have deserted the party. Talk about trouble in paradise, eh? In a letter, Mohamed slammed the 'false allegations and smears' about him, which he described as 'surprising and disappointing'. He went on: I have decided to leave Your Party and continue serving as I was elected as an Independent Member of Parliament for Dewsbury and Batley.

Back to the Covid inquiry, where chair Baroness Heather Hallett has presented the findings of its report. The conclusions don’t particularly paint anyone in a good light and the report even claims that acting ‘too little , too late’ cost the country as many as 23,000 lives in England – although this figure is already being disputed given that, um, ‘modelling’ doesn’t establish anything. The report also suggests that lockdown could have been avoided altogether had social distancing and isolation been introduced earlier. Good heavens… Former prime minister Boris Johnson has been dragged back into the limelight too, after the report claimed that BoJo failed to tackle a ‘toxic and chaotic culture’ in No. 10 – and, it notes, even ‘actively [encouraged] it’.

Oh dear. As if there hadn’t been enough hiccups in the launch of new left wing group Your Party, it appears there has been another bump in the road. It transpires that Jeremy Corbyn has, er, not been invited to a rally on the eve of the conference hosted by the party’s co-founder Zarah Sultana. Awkward… Jezza’s spokesperson confirmed that the ex-Labour leader had not been asked along to Sultana’s Liverpool event – which has been described by Zarah herself as an ‘unapologetically socialist, anti-Zionist, anti-imperialist programme’. But while it has been sold as a Your Party rally, it is not an official party event – and its tickets are being sold through Sultana’s personal Action Network campaign. How curious.

It was all guns blazing from Kemi Badenoch today. The Tory leader has clashed before with the Guardian – most notably during last year's contest when she lambasted the paper's claims of 'bullying and traumatising behaviour' when serving in government. And the wokest outlet in all the West was firmly in her sights today when Badenoch gave her big economy speech alongside Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride. At her presser, the Essex MP was asked whether she sympathised with the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who says that she has been called racist slurs and told to go 'back home'. She said that: Just this morning, I read this astonishing piece in the Guardian written by someone in this room.

Another day, another bad poll for Labour. YouGov research has revealed that a whopping 75 per cent of Scots disapprove of the UK government, with just half of those who backed Labour in 2024 saying they would consider voting for the reds again. But this doesn't necessarily spell good news for the nationalists: while 37 per cent of Scots would consider backing the SNP in a future election, more than half of the country is fed up with John Swinney's government. Oh dear… Polling carried out between 31 October and 5 November shows that, with just six months to go until the 2026 Holyrood election, the SNP is in the lead – with just over a third of Scots admitting they would consider voting for the party next May.